


Lost Without You

by Out-of-Character217 (Out_of_Character217)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Kissing, Lots of kissing, M/M, Soft and Fluffy, domestic stuff really, hints of smut but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 10:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16553915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Out_of_Character217/pseuds/Out-of-Character217
Summary: Five times Cloud and Leon kiss and the one time they kissed for the first time.Six little drabbles of domestic bliss because I'm a fool for soft Strifehart.





	Lost Without You

**Author's Note:**

> 'But I think I'm lost without you  
> I just feel crushed without you  
> I've been strong for so long  
> That I never thought how much I needed you  
> I think I'm lost without you.'
> 
> Lost Without You - Freya Ridings

For the briefest of moments the additional heat in the bed next to him had Leon startling awake, before he remembered the hazy bluish night that had come before and a lazy smirk had his mouth quirking up in a private smile. Buried in the crook of his arm, head burrowed into the soft pillow and a head of soft golden hair tickling his nose, Leon watched Cloud sleep. Features lax and peaceful, eyelashes quivering slightly against his cheeks as he dreamed, Cloud’s warm breath ghosted Leon’s neck through slightly parted, plump lips. Drawing his arm a little tighter, Leon turned into the embrace, careful not to jostle the bed too much and disturb the rare moment. Cloud only burrowed deeper, nuzzling into Leon’s side as a slight frown creased his brows. 

Closing his eyes and savouring the radiating heat, breathing in the heavy scent of sleep soaked bed clothes and slightly damp skin, Leon pressed his lax mouth against Cloud’s forehead in a lazy kiss, nudging bangs aside with his nose as he trailed his lips down over the scattering of light freckles across Cloud’s cheek, before the arch of his neck could crane that way no more and he finished up pushing his face into the space between Cloud and the pillow; the corner of Cloud’s mouth aligned just right with the corner of Leon’s. A gentle hand at the back of his head and fingers threading into Leon’s hair told Leon that his private little moment hadn’t been so private after all. 

Cloud sighed slightly and mumbled a drowsy “mornin’” without opening his eyes and misjudged the angle of his own kiss, catching the side of Leon’s mouth instead.  
“Hmm.” Leon hummed in response, tightening his arm around Cloud’s back as he burrowed deeper between Cloud and the pillow where it was warm and everything smelled of Cloud’s hair. 

*******

Leon pushed his fingers through his hair and growled roughly in annoyance. His tired, itchy eyes stung with every blink, the equations and schematics scattered across the dining table in front of him blurred into meaninglessness with every thump thump thump of his pounding head. His neck ached. His back ached. Every muscle pulled taught from endless hours sat pouring over his work ached. He was one more impossible problem away from flipping the table and burning everything down to the ground. 

A hand on his shoulder and a thumb pressed just right into the strain of his sore back finally broke him. He released his grip on his hair and threw down his pencil. 

“I’m done. I give up.” He cursed and moaned at the same time as another hand came up to mirror the first, beginning to draw small, concentric circles into his shoulder blades and a heavy warm weight settled in behind him. Cloud’s voice was low and hot next to his ear and Leon turned into it slightly. 

“You need to take a break.” 

“I need to get this prototype finished.” Leon was snappish despite the hands working magic into his cramped muscles. 

Without breaking the slow, soothing rhythm of his massage, Cloud took a moment to glance across the paperwork, picked up the discarded pencil, and quickly adjusted the math. Crossing out a mistake here and there and calculating a couple of percentages again before he placed the pencil back down and went back to working the kinks out of Leon’s shoulders. 

“There. I’m gonna grab a shower. I seriously suggest you join me.” He turned Leon’s face towards him with a light finger under his chin and kissed him softly over his shoulder, letting his tongue promise things it would deliver on later that night. He left without looking back and Leon blinked after him owlishly. Lips still tingling slightly from the moist kiss, he looked back at his work that suddenly made so much more sense. 

“...motherfu…” the hours wasted toiling over the broken equations sitting heavily between his brows as Leon frowned. 

*******

“See something you like, Leonhart?” Cloud finally acknowledged the gunblader’s presence with a final swing of his sword that brought him turning in a wide circle round to face his admirer. The inertia of his practice swing carried the enormous weapon up into the air before Cloud turned it skilfully in his hand and crashed it pointedly into the dirt. The crystal fissures was the only place that offered the space Cloud needed to practice, and it meant Leon had come a fair way out of his way to find him. 

“Just admiring the view.” Leon shrugged, folding his arms in a blatant display of over-practiced nonchalance. His eyes briefly alighted on Cloud’s bare chest, lingering a little longer over the shape of his shoulders before he found Cloud’s own amused eyes staring back at him. 

“I wasn’t planning on having to entertain an audience.” Cloud had barely worked up a sweat and would be out here honing his skills for hours yet. Something Leon had known all along and planned for specifically. He drew his gunblade and shrugged his way out of his bomber jacket. 

“How about a little audience participation then?” Cocking an eyebrow as he marched forwards and entered the rough circle of gravel Cloud had already disturbed. Boots crunched and the air thickened as Cloud watched him approach, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword still buried in the dirt. 

Leon walked as if to move past him, pulling his stride up short just as he came eye level with Cloud and caught his mouth in hot kiss that was half challenge and half hunger, a gloved hand hooked around the nape of Cloud’s neck as he angled his head to accommodate the half inch in height he held over his lover. With a playful shove of his nose he carried on past Cloud and opened up some ground before adopting a loose battle stance. 

Cloud glared over his shoulder at him, the heat of it coming from the smirk on his lips rather than the challenge in his eyes as he yanked his blade from the ground and turned, dropping easily into his own readiness and waited for Leon’s signal. 

*******

This wouldn’t be the first time Cloud would be woken in the middle of the night by violent nightmares, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last; horrific dreams haunted his sleep on such a regular basis that a routine of sorts had been developed. Leon was a light sleeper and their frequency meant that the gunblader often lost just as much sleep as Cloud did. On those nights it was tacitly agreed that Cloud would tend to himself, allowing his other to fall back into much needed rest as quickly as possible. But it wasn’t often that it was Leon falling victim to the horrors of his own subconscious. This ground was still relatively untrodden, the blueprint unmapped and Cloud’s tentative knowledge untested. He knew what he needed when unspoken horrors kept him awake. When the ugliest parts of himself tormented him in the darkest parts of the night. But the sight of sweat soaked sheets, empty and cold beside him gave him pause. 

The sound of a soft, wet sniff and then the tinkling of running water pulled him from their bed and he followed the light shafting in under their door and opened it onto the hallway, the bathroom opposite immediately coming into view. Leon stood at the sink, watching it fill with icy water. 

“You okay?” He asked softly, leaning up against the door frame. The last thing he wanted to do was crowd Leon. 

“I’m fine.” The answer came out a little snuffly and Leon quickly covered it by splashing his face. Cloud wasn’t an asshole, for the sake of Leon’s pride and his own he ignored the red rimmed eyes and puffy cheeks and let Leon compose himself for a few seconds. “Just a stupid dream.” He said a little quieter, bracing his arms against the lip of the sink as droplets of water clung to his chin and the tip of his nose. 

Cloud ignored the way they looked so much like the tears Leon had been trying to disguise and stepped across the hall and into the bathroom. Circling his arms around Leon’s waist, nudging his way under Leon’s defences he nuzzled his nose against Leon’s temple and kissed his cheek. He still felt warm and clammy despite the goosebumps that had appeared across his shoulders and Cloud absorbed the small shudder. 

“Just a stupid dream.” Cloud agreed, the words ghosting against Leon’s skin as he pressed another reassuring kiss there and held him a little tighter. 

*******

“Smells good.” Leon’s baritone made Cloud jump as the gunblader appeared out of nowhere and wrapped his arms around Cloud’s waist. Chin resting on his shoulder, the length of his body pressed up against Cloud’s back, he was suddenly very much - very purposefully - in Cloud’s space. “Whatcha cooking?”

Cloud shrugged, adjusting the heat under the pot of sauce so that it wouldn’t burn and turning the heat up under the pasta, encouraging it to boil quicker. “Just whatever was lying around.” Humble to the last. 

Leon hummed and the vibration rumbled through his chest and across Cloud’s back. 

“You hungry?” Cloud asked, batting aside the errant coil of arousal Leon’s voice sometimes awoke in him. There was no telling when it would happen, but there were times it could drive him to distraction. 

“Depends,” Leon was in a playful mood. “What’s on the menu?” He turned his head into the crook of Cloud’s neck and found the soft skin just under his jaw. With a moist, open mouthed kiss, he gently bared his teeth and dragged his tongue along the tender, corded muscle and felt Cloud’s pulse point jump, Leon’s own heartbeat skipping a beat at how simple it was to effect Cloud this easily. His arms around Cloud’s waist tightened, pressing their bodies a little closer together. 

“I told you…” Cloud tried to banter, his idea of sexy talk leaving something to be desired as he tried to tease Leon just as efficiently as Leon was teasing him. 

“Whatever’s lying around. I heard you.” Leon cut him off, teeth tugging a little harder at his skin and his tongue promising a bruise if he sucked any harder. “That include the chef?” Leon’s hand had found its way under Cloud’s shirt and he pulled the lobe of Cloud’s ear into his mouth, toying with the earring. 

Cloud let his head fall back against Leon’s shoulder, an open, silent invitation for Leon to continue. Distracted now, he placed the spatula down on the counter and threaded one hand behind him into Leon’s hair, the other finding the back of Leon’s hand under his shirt. A fleeting, barely coherent thought fought its way to the surface of Cloud’s mind:

“It’ll burn.” Meaning the food, the kisses, Leon’s touch. 

“Don’t care.” Leon replied, turning Cloud skilfully, backing him up against the cupboards, a wicked spark in his diamond eyes before he slowly lowered himself to his knees. 

*******

“Cloud?!” The surprise in Leon’s voice was to be expected. It was late, Cloud had stopped by unannounced, and it was more than fair to say it was unusual for Cloud to seek him out in the first place. Their tentative friendship could more easily be described as an acquaintance for all the times they’d actually been alone together, let alone spoken more than two sentences to each other in the six months Cloud had been back. Regardless, Leon had liked Cloud almost immediately. “What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?” He seemed nervous, an unnatural edge of tension sitting across his shoulders that Leon recognised without prompting, and his searing blue eyes held a quivering uncertainty to them. 

“Sure.” Leon stepped aside, making room in the small kitchen as Cloud closed the door and stood awkwardly by the threshold; his frame hanging in the space like a pregnant pause. 

“What’s up?” Leon stood with one hip tilted against the counter, arms folder as casually as he knew how. 

“I umm… wanted to come see you,” Cloud swallowed visibly, his throat bobbing and his eyes cutting to the left, then right, shoulders still squared as if bracing for battle. “I was thinking… I mean I thought…” a little cough followed by three seconds of agonising silence. “I know we haven’t spent much time together. We don’t really… I mean we don’t really know one another all that well,” a faint red tinge began to creep into Cloud’s cheeks and he seemed suddenly hot and flustered. Leon momentarily wondered if he were ill, before recalling the mako Tifa had told him about which rendered that theory mute. “I guess… you’re kind of wondering why I’m here,” Cloud continued to stall. “And I was wondering if, maybe, we… I mean you…” the words seemed to die in Cloud’s mouth before they ever saw the light of day and Leon witnessed the acute pain in Cloud’s eyes, everything about him screaming humiliation. 

“Fuck!” He suddenly exhaled, shoulders going slack like a marionette being cut from its strings. “I’m no good at this. I just…” he looked back at Leon with imploring eyes, begging him to understand without words and it was only after the brief flicker of his eyes glancing quickly at Leon’s lips that clued the gunblader in to what Cloud was about to do next, mere seconds before he did it. Everything happened in slow motion. Leon watched as Cloud stepped forwards, hand already halfway raised to his face, the minimal space between them gone in a heartbeat as Cloud leaned forwards and kissed him, mouth missing its target slightly as Cloud caught more of Leon’s bottom lip than anything else. Where there had been the sight and smell of his own comfortable kitchen, it was now filled up with Cloud, his blue eyes wide, the scent of him filling Leon’s nose as he tasted the cold night air on his skin. 

Startled, Leon could only stare back, frozen in place as his brain struggled to register that Cloud was kissing him, and he should probably kiss back. But he’d taken too long and Cloud had assumed defeat before he’d even begun. So he pulled away quickly, cheeks burning with resignation and eyes dark with shame. He looked away, jaw clenched and fists balled at his sides as he stepped back. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I shouldn't have done that, I… I don’t know what… just, just forget about it, okay?” Cloud made to pull the door back open, ears burning and roaring with mortification, he nearly missed Leon’s soft, shocked reply. 

“Wait,” a hand came to rest against the door jam, right next to Cloud’s head. “Just… wait a minute.” Leon coaxed the doorknob out of Cloud’s clenched fist and turned him around, the tightness around Cloud’s eyes so obvious this close up. 

They stared at each other. For a long while it seemed. Unknown thoughts passing behind guarded and vulnerable eyes alike, Cloud’s bottom lip trembling just slightly enough to break the trance before Leon dove back in and attacked Cloud’s mouth, slamming him against the door as hands found their way into blond hair and Cloud’s short moan of surprise was devoured inside the kiss, disappearing amongst the sounds of desperate panting. 

Cloud ended up staying - the night, the weekend, for good - their first quickly turning into the first of so many they couldn't even hope to count.


End file.
